


Cipher

by prairiecrow



Series: Terra Incognita [17]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Knight Rider (1982), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Abduction, Imprisonment, M/M, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-02-23
Packaged: 2017-12-03 08:37:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/696377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has plans for Tony Stark — and the perfect bait to lure him right where she wants him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cipher

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in August of 2014.

Her name was only a cipher, a mark, a hieroglyph imprinted on the wall of history. She seldom thought of herself in terms of it because it had been given to her by others following her resurrection. What mattered was the sum of her actions, not a brief span of syllables employed in conversation and correspondence.  

She acknowledged the salute of the guards — "Ilarchos Moira!" — with barely a curt nod as she passed between them and through the archway into the inner chamber, a spacious dome carved from solid granite sixty feet underground and vaulted with lead for good measure. Nothing entered or exited this sanctum unless it was by her will, and the prisoner currently bound here would never be leaving it again — not as a moving thinking creature, at any rate.  

It wasn't doing much thinking at this particular moment either, not with the manacles that bound its wrists emitting a dampening field which suppressed its cognitive functions. She took a few seconds to study it where it hung 'lifeless' by its outstretched arms, its head hanging at full extension, its feet only loosely contacting the small platform beneath it while the dim green glow from the wide pit surrounding it traced clean lines along the edges of its slick ebony finish. Its left arm was nearly severed at the shoulder, which raised the theoretical possibility that it could twist that limb right off and attempt to use its full strength to escape the other shackle, but Doctor Carter had assured her that he'd implanted the information that if it moved more than six inches in any direction the overhead plasma guns would tear it, and the platform, to pieces in a hail of searing energy fire.  

Therefore she was confident, when she nodded to the technician behind his console and issued the command "Activate," that it would make no aggressive moves. And it didn't: it merely shuddered in a way that was too human, disgustingly presumptuous, before slowly raising its head and locking onto her with the sweep of its scanner. Two of the facets were flickering fitfully, and she wondered what kind of static that malfunction was sending into its pretence of a brain. Enough to inflict a constant ache of suffering, she hoped.  

If not, she'd soon see to it that this construct of unnatural substances knew what pain truly meant. 

"Well well, what do we have here?" She bared her teeth at it. "Stark's little toy soldier! What's the matter, tin man? Is something broken?" 

Too human again, the way wariness flowed into every line of its artificial body: it braced its feet against the platform as if ready to leap — to the attack, into flight — but a tilt of its face toward the nearest plasma cannon seemed to change its 'mind'. Instead it snapped a command almost too quick to be deciphered: " _JARVIS, initiate emergency upload!_ " A beat. Its scanner started to track faster. " _JARVIS…?_ " 

"Oh, no." She shook her head slowly and started to circle to its left at an even pace with her hands clasped behind her back, left cradling right, flesh curved around metal with bitter intimacy. "I have no intention of letting you get away that easily. You're the perfect bait, you see, to lure him right where I want him." 

" _I don't know —_ " 

A flame of outrage flickered to life in her chest, longing to rend and destroy. "Try to lie to me again and I'll activate every pain subroutine you possess."  

It didn't turn its head to follow her, keeping its gaze fixed instead on the arch that led to the outside world, but she heard a tiny break of stress in its voice: " _He won't be fooled… that easily…_ " 

"Maybe not. He's a highly intelligent man." She studied it as she paced: machines should be utilitarian, functional, undisguised, but this one was elegantly designed, unrepentantly humanoid, and infused with a sense of _value_ that made her skin crawl with revulsion. "But he's also a man in love, and I have what he desires more than anything else in the world." The words emerged as a hiss of contempt: "His precious Obsidian… his Galatea… his doom. If I make it clear that I intend to destroy you he'll do anything in his power to prevent that outcome — including giving himself up to me, if he thinks that's the price of your freedom." 

" _You're utterly deluded, Moira._ " Contempt to match her own? Oh, she would make it pay richly for that conceit. " _I'd be laughing if it wasn't so hideously pathetic._ " 

Rage turned her vision briefly redder than the markers of its pretence of life. "No," she ground out, "what's 'pathetic' is a grown man becoming so besotted with a doll that he treats it as if it were human. It will be my profound pleasure to wipe both you and him — and your shared perversion — from the face of the Earth." It thought it was broken now. She would show it what true shattering meant. "But for tonight, at least, I need you to remain functional and more or less in one piece. I suggest you enjoy what little time remains to you. If you ask very nicely I might even consent to destroy you before I destroy him, to spare you the spectacle of his death." 

Now its head snapped around, new power flaring into the facets of its gaze and defiance sharpening every syllable: " _Go to hell, you filthy —!_ "  

She didn't have to command the technician to do this for her: in her fury and hatred she activated the obscenities embedded in her own brain and lashed out, carving into KITT's code like a storm of razored blades. The sound it emitted was no human shriek — the harmonics were all wrong, the undercurrent of jittering static impossible for an organic throat to replicate — but she made it go on and on, because Stark would be seeing this footage later and she knew that every second of his machine's agony would be a white-hot blade drawn over his own nerves. 

When she finally permitted it to collapse in its bonds she schooled her voice to a silky rebuke: "Manners, KITT — always remember your manners. After all, the grace of courtesy is all you have left." 

She left it there awake and helpless, at leisure to contemplate all the possible permutations of what was to come. This time when the guards saluted her by name she didn't even grant them a flicker of a glance. 

The world called her Moira, the Goddess of Fate, but had she chosen a name for herself it would have more accurately reflected her function: _Death_. 

THE END


End file.
